Super-strength skunk killed my son… it’s as dangerous as coke or heroin
Lord Monson urges the Government to reclassify 'superskunk' as a Class A drug after his son Rupert took his own life following psychosis
ONE year ago, my second son Rupert took his life in violent fashion.
Then 21, Rupert was attempting to recover from drug-induced psychosis.
Supported by an attentive mother, grandmother and visiting nurses, he was on strong medication.
However, schizophrenia, triggered by his cannabis habit at university, had taken an unshakeable grip.
Specifically, his mind was plagued by ugly, taunting gatecrashers he could not eject. Kill yourself, these ghouls commanded. One evening he obeyed.
Handsome and intelligent, an athlete as well as accomplished artist, Rupert could have been anything besides the sad deranged wreck into which he declined. A father’s grief prompted me to learn more about cannabis, the drug that did for him.
What I discovered shocked me.
Beneath my radar, the strength of cannabis had shot up from the days when I had the occasional spliff.
Back then in the late Seventies, the psychoactive ingredient, THC, was 1.4 per cent, enough to make you disengaged but not enough to make you mad.
Now, most of the stuff sold as cannabis is 14 per cent, ten times higher, a brain re-arranger that goes by the name of “skunk” or “superskunk”.
The King’s College London study published this week shows skunk now forms 94 per cent of cannabis for sale.
It is shocking but does not surprise me. Skunk will continue muscling out its weaker-potency version.
It is also getting stronger. Ten years ago, the strongest cannabis in Britain was 10.9 per cent. Now it is 29 per cent.
Why are growers modifying the cannabis plant to achieve such strength?
Inquiries led me to learn that the higher the strength, the more susceptible users were to addiction. As a dealer you want addicts for customers, not occasional users. As such, dealers are motivated to sell high-potency cannabis.
In accordance with the growing strength of cannabis is a rapid rise of hospital admissions for related psychosis — they have more than doubled in the past ten years, putting significant strain on the NHS.
Researchers writing in the journal Psychological Medicine found that for every one per cent increase in THC, about 60 more people entered a drug treatment programme.
If the NHS was able to cope, they would have, for instance, been able to get Rupert into a treatment ward when he sought admission, three days before he killed himself.
The death of Rupert was preceded by the death, five years previously, of my oldest son Alexander, murdered in a police cell in Kenya.
This double tragedy led the Prime Minister to write me a touching letter of condolence. She has since learned of my arguments for a change in the law but she clearly has no appetite to alter the status quo.
While the Government maintains its official stance of prohibition, on the street is a different reality.
These days, the police make only a token effort to enforce drug laws. Seizures and arrests have fallen to new lows. Message: Expect the wrath of the system for a single traffic offence — sell toxic drugs with relative impunity.
What we have is not prohibition of drugs but tacit decriminalisation. The sure winners are drug gangsters, whose criminality is overlooked.
At present skunk is classed the same as cannabis – a class B drug. But this suggests it is a “soft drug”. But skunk is clearly not a soft drug. In my view anything with over five per cent THC should be considered to be a Class A drug, put in the same bracket as cocaine, ecstasy, LSD and heroin.
If it was a class A drug, dealers — and in my view we should concentrate on the dealers rather than users of high-potency cannabis — would feel the full weight of the law with sentences of up to life in prison.
We also need proper education on drugs.
This is a task that should be carried out by the Home Office. Indeed, it is enshrined in law. Section 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Act (1971) is given as its fourth directive: “Educating the public (and in particular the young) in the dangers of misusing drugs, and for giving publicity to those dangers.”
Regrettably the very body that is supposed to honour this mandated obligation seems to have abandoned it.
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My understanding is The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs decided three years ago that education on such matters would only encourage the young to experiment in the very habits about which they are being warned.
Since then, all education on drugs by the Government appears to have ceased.
Drug-related charities are also now loathe to have a programme of education lest they displease the Government, on which many financially rely.
Drugs education is not only welcome, it should be encouraged. As this new Home Office policy slipped through unchallenged and not been debated in Parliament, it should be overturned.
Indeed, those responsible should be held to account for abandoning their duty.
Through the website I back, , which gives families a platform to talk about problems with cannabis use, and by lobbying Parliament, I hope we can bring about change.
We cannot just sit back and wait for the next damning report.
How many more people will skunk damage in the meantime?
- Nicholas Monson is the 12th Baron Monson of Burton, Lincolnshire.